Wednesday, October 19, 2016

While Bill C-6 moves its way slowly through Parliment, The CBC reports that one critical aspect of the previous Bill C-24 remains intact. That the Canadian government can revoke citizenship without a hearing in so-called "misrepresentation" cases seems to be against the spirit of fairness. If these citizens are accused of falsifying information on their citizenship applications, give them their day in court to deny the allegations and prove them false if necessary.

While I don't believe people who lied on their applications should be let off the hook, I know that there are some cases where you have to understand the context of the misinformation in order to make a fair judgement.

The Trudeau government used powers granted by the Harper government's controversial citizenship law to make 184 revocation decisions without legal hearings between November 2015 and the end of August. About 90 per cent of the decisions resulted in a negative finding and the loss of a person's citizenship.